Summary: SEARCH INSIDE YOURSELF with Google's Chade-Meng Tan "SEARCH INSIDE YOURSELF," the popular course taught at Google, was created by Julie Ann's ConsciousSHIFT guest Chade-Meng Tan, to elevate the work and lives of the best and brightest people at one of the most innovative, successful, and profitable businesses in the world. Now, Meng has captured and shared the magic and transformation of the Google course, in his new book, "SEARCH INSIDE YOURSELF: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace)." Meng's job title at Google is Jolly Good Fellow (which nobody can deny). His job description reads, "Enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace." Isn't that a phenomenal job description - one that many ConsciousSHIFT-ers would love to express, as well? Meng, as he is known, takes his job seriously and laughs a lot at the office. As one of Google's earliest engineers, he helped build Google's first mobile search service and headed the team that monitored Google's search quality. He currently serves with Google's Talent Team. Deeply rooted in science, the SEARCH INSIDE YOURSELF course was designed for Googlers as a means to reduce stress, increase well-being, heighten focus and creativity, become more optimistic and resilient, build fulfilling relationships, and ultimately become happier and more profitable in their work and their lives. While the "Search Inside Yourself" skills learned are designed to help one to "optimize thyself" and gain an extra edge, it may be surprising that the core concepts of the program are mindfulness and emotional intelligence. Created in collaboration with a Zen Master, a CEO, a Stanford University scientist, and bestselling author Daniel Goleman (the guy who literally wrote the book on emotional intelligence), and written by Meng, "SEARCH INSIDE YOURSELF" distills mindfulness and emotional intelligence in a way even a skeptical, compulsively pragmatic, engineering-oriented brain like Meng's can process, breaking them down into a set of practical tools and skills that can be adopted by anyone, at any career or experience level. "For the benefits of mindfulness and emotional intelligence to become widely accessible, they cannot be just the domain of bald people in funny robes living in mountains, or small groups of New Age folks living in San Francisco," says Meng. "Meditation needs to become 'real'. It needs to align with the lives and interests of real people." On ConsciousSHIFT, Meng addresses questions that may arise from skeptics with a "traditional" business mindset, such as: How can one to find joy while succeeding at work when under stress and pressure? How does compassion impact the profitability of a business? How can meditative practices benefit people's careers and business bottom lines?
